In the future we will all be wearing yellow sweatshirts and Bumpits
We’ve been doing a fair amount of weeding in the old Children’s Center these days. I’ve taken on the challenge of tackling the fiction. Weeding a fiction collection is rather like weeding a garden. There’s a lot of dead heading involved. Space to fill. Dead matter to discard.
While going through the books of yesteryear I’ve been intrigued by the passing fancy of some authors. While folks like Judy Blume or Laurence Yep have written for decades and remain popular figures on the Summer Reading Lists, certain writers have fallen by the wayside.
The other day Jennifer of the Jean Little Library blog left this comment on my post about movies that usurp their books in the public consciousness: “Re. Doubtfire, Anne Fine used to be majorly popular – take a look at a library shelf that hasn’t been weeded for a while. She’s still a big deal over in the UK, although her popularity over here has waned, at least in my library. She seems to be mostly writing beginning chapter books now – Jamie and Angus anyone? Her older book Flour Babies still checks out frequently, despite the awful cover.”
She’s not wrong. Weeding the Fine books I had to determine which ones would stay and which ones would go (we have reference editions of most books, so this is not quite the dire situation I make it sound).
It gets one to thinking: Who are the popular children’s authors of yesteryear who remain on unweeded children’s library shelves around the country? Who just doesn’t move like they used to? A couple names come to mind right off the bat.
Anne Fine: Already mentioned. In a way, her popularity has been usurped by Jacqueline Wilson.
Paula Danziger: She may be in need of a book jacket revival. In fact, I believe such a revival has already happened overseas in Britain. In her day, Danziger was the go-to funny female writer (shoes that are now filled by Lisa Yee). Some of her titles still go out, in spite of their covers, but for the most part they shelf sit more than I’d like.
Peter Dickinson: We have a heckuva lot of Dickinson on my library’s shelves, but when I bring up books like Eva with my kids all I meet with are blank stares. I think he was always more of a YA writer anyway, so it’s strange that we have so many of his books in the children’s section. Maybe he should have been purchased for the teen collections all along.
Scott O’Dell – Aside from Island of the Blue Dolphins and Zia, his books don’t really go out. Compare his outdoor survival tales to those of Gary Paulsen or Jean Craighead George and you’ll see a definite difference in circulation stats.
Those are just the first four to come to mind, though there are certainly others out there as well. Confess it then, folks. Are there great authors of the past that just sit on your shelves, where once they used to fly? If possible, limit yourself to folks who did particularly well in the 70s and 80s (even early 90s) but don’t write all that much today. We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, after all.
Constance Greene is one–when I first became a librarian back in the 80’s, the same children who read all of Judy Bloom read Constance Green. And Marilyn Sachs is another–I think both these good authors could use new covers. Danziger’s P.S. Longer Letter Later book (written with Ann Martin) is still extremely popular, along with its sequel–children who read P.S. sometimes go on to Danziger’s other books.
E.L. Konigsburg – Mixed up Files still circulates somewhat, but not much else, including her latest.
Zylpha Keatley Snyder – Fifth and sixth graders love The Egypt Game, but do not check out other titles.
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Constance Greene, check. We’ve a fair amount of her on the shelves. Snyder, heck yes. The Egyptian Game, The Gypsy Game, The Headless Cupid, and anything with a new cover does okay. That said, the older stuff sits and sits. And Konigsburg, yes. Though we’ve had luck with the Jennifer, Hecate, etc. book in its new cover, and A View from Saturday does well on Summer Reading Lists.
Konigsburg? Say it isn’t so!
We’re weeding our juvenile fiction collection as well. I’ve asked the other librarians who are weeding to collect the books that never checked out or have really old and dated covers. I’ve scanned the cover and collected the circulation info and put them on a posterous blog. It’s really interesting to see. The Isis Pedlar by Monica hughes is my favorite. We’re trying to draw conclusions from our weeding, so far it’s too random. I’m writing this at home so I don’t remember some names, but I remember: Betsy Byars, particularly Bingo Brown. Diana Wynne Jones and Kathleen Karr
I’m trying to put one book out a day, so visit more than once on your trip down children’s lit memory lane
I’m curious whether you all think it’s because the writing gets dated, the jackets get dated, or whether the frontlist-loaded publishing model is pushing backlist aside. I do know from the publishing side that perennial backlist classics, things that have sold well for decades, are now in precipitous decline and it’s not clear why.
Lois Lowry’s books remain popular in our library, except for the Anastasia Krupnik series. I don’t know if the covers have been updated, but we still have the original covers. I recently reread the first one and I still love it. I remember reading them when I was a child, but they don’t seem to circulate as much as her other books do.
Check out Thomas Memorial Library’s (Cape Elizabeth, ME) Lonely Books Club. They won an EBSCO Award for this program. Children read books from the Lonely Books Club display (of books that don’t circulate frequently) and fill ou reviews for chances to win prizes. If you do a search (library’s name + “Lonely Books Club), you can find out more (including downloads if you want to start a club). I haven’t done this yet, but it’s been on my agenda ever since I read about it.
Oh, I see that we were supposed to include writers that aren’t as active as they used to be, so that leaves out Lowry. Well, I loved Barthe DeClements’s books when I was a kid, but I don’t think hers go out as much.
Semi-off-topic, does all this weeding mean that there’s a big library book sale coming up? I do love me a chance to buy large stacks of worn library-bound books…
Kristen: book jackets can be replaced, I think it’s the literature trends that push titles. Harry Potter brought fantasy to a new level and I think children became sophisticated readers. thick books have become a whole genre in our library. as in What would you like to read? A thick book… they don’t seem to care what the genre is, they want the story to last a long time… look at Tumtum and Nutmeg it’s 504 pages long for third and fourth graders.
Anyway, fantasy ruled the land for almost a decade which has sort of morphed to SF and horror (we’re doing a werewolves, vampires and zombies staff reading assignment this month). So with these trends, great books like bingo brown and anastasia krupnik faded (but Beezus and Ramona and Judy Blume still get read….) Maybe mama’s who read Lowry and Byars and Konigsburg will gently remind their offspring of these good books.